2025 Student Mission Highlights

June 2025

During Spring 2025, our students participated in an ambitious programme of 6 Wycliffe Mission Projects with witness in local, national and global settings. We invited you to pray for these missions - and as we reflect on their successful conclusion we'd like to thank you for all your support. 

We have all learned a lot from the stories emerging from our returning mission teams and are already turning our thoughts to shaping the 2026 mission programme.

Here is a brief summary of this year's edited highlights:

	(1) Bradmore Road Nursery Five students spent 5 days on a creative project with children aged 1 to 5 years old in the Nursery next door. They led lively sessions of action songs, participation stories, with engagement in arts and crafts and educational play. They arranged several off site visits to the Children's Centre at St Andrews Church, and to our campus at Wycliffe. They enjoyed coming to Chapel and discovering what the furniture is for, but above all they loved the Easter Egg Hunt in the grounds of Wycliffe Hall. Such was the warmth of welcome that they would like us to arrange further events, before Christmas as well as before Easter.
	(2) Hereford Churches A full team of 10 students were distributed equally around 5 churches around Hereford (2 in the town and 3 in the countryside). This allowed opportunities for students to preach and pray in a wide range of cultures and styles of worship. Alongside schools work and church groups, they engaged with the homeless in the Leys Cafe; they joined a night shift with the Street Pastors Team in the city; and they visited an Ecumenical Charity for children in poverty in Ledbury as urgent service in a deprived community. It was great to see how a young church plant had grown with new leadership since a Wycliffe Team came in 2024.
	(3) Betel Community in Birmingham A smaller team of 4 went to join the life of 2 Betel Hostels, one with 40 men and one with 10 women, in Christian Recovery Communities. Their daily pattern of support in Christ revolves around regular prayers, purposeful work and friendly conversation over meals. Some only arrived quite recently; others have been there for over 2 years, but despite tough starts in life, most are making good progress in deliverance from addictive substances and personal despair. Other forms of medical recovery had not worked, but Betel offered a new and living way to freedom in Christ and in Christian Community. A privilege to witness this.
	(4) Amersham Churches Six of us spent 9 days supporting the ministries of the town centre church & a local village church. We preached and shared testimonies in church. We engaged in Lent Courses or local Fellowship Groups. We went to the "Bible Brick Club" in the local CofE school and shared in a creative Q&A session at a new Youth Group. We visited the housebound and prayed with the sick. People found our Morning Prayer sessions helpful. Our week of encounters ended with a Park Run past the Amersham Martyrs Memorial, a sumptuous Tea Dance with Senior Citizens in church, and a lovely Baptism Service with many guests filling the church.
	(5) North London Churches 5 students spent 5 exciting days discovering vibrant Christian fellowship in two Turkish churches in North London, full of eastern hospitality and fascinating testimony. They learned a lot about comparative religion from comparing texts from the Quran and the Bible and were guided through the history of Christian-Muslim relationships in the British Museum. They explored face to face encounters with book tables on the streets of London and engaged in direct debate across cultures at Speakers Corner. A transforming experience for those called to serve in multi-ethnic parishes in the UK or in global mission abroad.
	(6) West Africa Three students spent 12 days in Freetown in Sierra Leone and in Banjul in The Gambia arranged by the Relay Trust through the Archbishop of West Africa. This was a profound exposure to realities of poverty and hope in the global south. They attended a central conference on "Wellbeing and Resilience Today" with applications to church and community life, and they were delighted to serve in the library at Mount Zion Theological College by cataloguing 1,300 new volumes. Although some suffered from tummy upsets, all said the trip was so worthwhile seeing growth in Freetown, both in discipleship and community development.

Wycliffe Hall has been sending out annual mission teams for 50 years and every ordinand participates in a week-long mission trip during the course of their training. It's an important outreach component that puts theological learning into service by doing the work of the Gospel in a range of community settings. As ever, we are incredibly grateful to all our hosts and partners for enabling these opportunities.

We offer our service with others in the spirit of Paul who wrote :
"I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow." (1 Corinthians 3:6)

Revd Canon Bruce Gillingham
Wycliffe Hall Chaplaincy Team